Braves Report

For Game 5, I said that when it rains, it pours. Well, after the rain stopped in San Francisco yesterday, so did the Braves’ offense. They lost the rubber match against the Giants and their first series of the year. Not an impressive way to start the road trip, bringing their record down to .500 for the first time this season. Let’s see what happened.

Kawakami, a pitcher who was great last year in games against league-leading pitchers, was okay in his start on Sunday night. His line was 6 innings, 5 hits, 3 runs (2 earned), a walk, and a strikeout. This was good enough to get him the loss. Medlen followed, pitched an inning and a third, allowing 2 runs on 2 hits, while striking out 2. O’Flaherty pitched the last 2/3rds of an inning, giving up a run on a hit and recording a strikeout. Not their best performances of the season.

The Braves’ woes were compounded by the offense only being able to score 3 runs. These both came in the form of homers: a 2-run shot from McCann in the first, and a solo shot by Jason Heyward (his third) in the 9th. He has been a glimmer of hope on an offense that has struggled a bit in the past few games. An annoying fact is Tim Lincecum struck out 10 Braves. Let’s not have too many more like this.

Braves drop the series, 6-3.

Next game @ 6:35 PM EST.